As Fusion Cup enters the final 2 weeks of Round Robin play, I would like to open this thread for evaluation comments.

TheFUSIONCUPhas been a place for us to try new things as a tournament, and represents the 2nd biggest team tournament we do in the TTR competitive play community. Please let us know what your thoughts are in evaluating how we can improve or keep the same certain elements of the tournament.

I start this thread now since I know once teams are eliminated, interest wanes.

As TAG player I like the home advantage with map choice. Unfortunetely I could had this choice in only 2 games. Too many teams that play US map only (cannot or don't want to play Europe?). I could understand Asia map quite new and unbuyed , but Europe map I don't understand.

I heard about some schedule problems in other matches, League and MEMC both running, but nothing terrible. I read someone not happy of 10 long rounds. I don't like so many 2-2 results in clashes.
Maybe could be better 5 matches for clash and a couple of Team less?

As TAG player I like the home advantage with map choice. Unfortunetely I could had this choice in only 2 games. Too many teams that play US map only (cannot or don't want to play Europe?). I could understand Asia map quite new and unbuyed , but Europe map I don't understand.

I heard about some schedule problems in other matches, League and MEMC both running, but nothing terrible. I read someone not happy of 10 long rounds. I don't like so many 2-2 results in clashes.
Maybe could be better 5 matches for clash and a couple of Team less?

Marco

I think it's because many teams don't want to play Europe. At least you got EU TAG out of us .

As for scheduling problem goes, I think TAG lineups should be submitted two weeks in advance instead of one week in advance because it's much harder to get 4 players together.

Teams adjust the format as they wish instead of being subjected to it.

No particular issues with scheduling overall

There were only 6 clash ties out of 36 played. I think it's a non-issue at the moment.

On the negative side:

The calendar was not meant to host an 11-week tournament. A random vote not taking into account the big picture affected the MEMC scheduling, and overall interest has been on the decline since round 5/6.

A TAG match should not last more than 2 hours. I understand that teams are trying their best, but the playing time is sometimes beyond reasonable.
A clock similar to Small World would be so welcome.

Overall, Fusion should not last more than 2 months and we hoped tha multi euro would be concluded in 6 to 8 weeks, and it's far from being the case. Tournaments now overlap too much.
Calendar has to be more consistent.

I clearly prefer team events over single player events because of the "social interaction" that comes with it (regular conversations with your teammates, people cheering in the lobby, colleagues giving you Feedback / praise / comfort after your matches, ...).
I even prefer FC over NC because you are free to select your team and can play with all your best friends (which makes the social interaction even better).
Hence I have no problem with long duration if the number of participants demands it.

Compared to the original calender we simply started too late ... so lesson learnt for next year should be "start planning of upcoming tournaments early".

All fine with the format. I'm clearly in favour of 4 matches/clash allowing for ties, because
a) 3 possible endings (win/tie/loss) of a clash are better than only 2 (win/loss). If performance is pretty equal why force a winner?
b) The possibility of ties and maybe as a consequence closer standings in RR make each single game more important. So there is still motivation to fight for 2:4 when being down 0:4 which may not be there otherwise.

Scheduling was (barely) OK but had been better in past tournaments and we risk chaos if it gets worse (which may well happen... once you started to allow for matches played beyond deadline people may start thinking "ok, np, team xxx was allowed to play later, so we will certainly be allowed to delay our clash, too"). So we should put more emphasis on it next year.

I like Fusion Cup and the home map choice made it even more fun. If in league everyone provided their availabilities wihin 5 days (the same way as for multis) there would not have been any issues with scheduling a match. But this complaint is more relevant for the league evaluation

I am going to repeat what other people said, but I am very happy with the current format. A lot of brilliant ideas were implemented this year, and Onyx and Sysyphus did a good job TDing.
This is a fun tournament, and my team played like it : no pressure, anyone is free to play any game, tag with rotations of players for people to discover.

4 games is good, and a draw is sometimes good result to obtain.
The team advantage to chose maps gives some strategic top up to the actual game play.

It was first year, so notification of choice of map was most of the time late, but scheduling compensated it.
Also, I can see some teams had issues playing games on time(PPB), which may be a problem since a few teams still can qualify.
We should enforce games to be played on time, all the more with other competitions upcoming.

I think a multi-tournatment shouldn't start during fusion. Often it's difficult to schedule Multi-dates + TAG-dates; in both you need to find dates with 4-5 persons. + persons are in different multi groups ...

Thinking about sharing choice of maps between the 2 teams (one team choses AAT/Swiss/Asia ... the other team choses which map to play in TAG).

It's a bit too much with Fusion, League, MEMC, SPWC, EMC now - but i really like Fusion Cup the way it is.

yes.
this is a big problem.

i proprosed new calendar for next year at Tournements Group.

- League.
12 Players for group.
A1 4 DOWN IN A2
A2 4 UP IN A1 – 4 DOWN IN B
B (2 GROUPS) 2 FOR GROUPS UP IN A2 AND 4 DOWN IN C
C (2 OR MORE GROUPS) 8 UP IN B.
Less games but the same competitiveness.
More chances of players C to go to B
Two categories of A with the best players

- Never 2 big tournaments together.

- The tournaments have to start when they finish the others because in the end there are few players especially in tournaments 2p.

I think Fusion is one of the better tournaments. Of course I also like AAT, but there isn't much interest in it.

I like being able to play all the teams - no getting stuck in the "hard" group.

I wish there was some way to get people playing more formats - I would have liked to try Europe TAG, but I assume any team that would actually agree to play the map would probably be too good at it (could have tried it earlier in the tournament and not at the end when fighting for playoff position).

Just had a thought - what if after Clash wins, the tie-breaker was some point system based on teams that played the most variety? No idea how you would score it - perhaps a max of 4 points per category (i.e. only I played the AAT so thats 1 point, 3 of us played TAG so 3 points. Then maybe add an extra point for each different map within a category you played - so +1 if did a Europe TAG, etc.). Or from a different perspective, what if you got 3 points for a match win, 1 point for a tie, 0 for a loss, but if it is the first time in the tournament you are playing that category, you get +1. The numbers could be different like 2/1/0 and +.5.

I do agree there are a lot of tournaments running at the same time, but when I was working with Sysyphus a while back, there just is not enough room in the schedule for everything - especially if you do not schedule anything else during NC, and very light scheduling during the summer month(s) when Europeans are not around.

One thing I would like is to establish a hierarchy of tournaments - which ones are more important than others. In this way, when there is a conflict in scheduling, the more important tournament takes precedence.

It has come up more than once during Fusion, where someone scheduled their Fusion match, then people decided to schedule MEMC at the same time. This leaves the person in a bad situation. Go with the MEMC schedule because it involves more people and then try to re-schedule Fusion. But what if this causes a delay in Fusion, then the Fusion people are upset. If there was a hierarchy, then at least as a player you could say "I'm sorry my Fusion match takes precedence over MEMC". Its not much, but at least if a tournament is going to be delayed it should be the one that is less important (to the TTR community).

Obviously if you do not have time, you should not be joining multiple tournaments, but because of our small community, as much participation as possible is needed.

Taking variety as tiebreaker has a downside - it's not always your choice that you couldn't play the map you wanted to.

a) home team chooses - so you depend on what they choose and some teams are home team more often than others

b) TAG restriction - if your opp can only offer US you have to go with that. So if e.g. you are home team against US-only players and all others choose US (likely, if you are known to be good in Asia and EU) you end up with playing US only and it's not your fault at all.

I agree - but not for FC (team tournaments).
Swiss would be a good thing for SPWC/EMC/... in my eyes.
Maybe we could give it a try with AMC and/or SMC next year.

If we try Swiss we have a choice to make:
Count only win/loss/tie or count games won (+ Bonus for win like in League)?
I'm in favour of "games won" because
- every game is important
- there is a chance to come back to the top after a marginal loss

4) Multi Euro/Asia may alternate and find a less busy spot in the the calendar. A tournament with 25 players should not last that long. This was supposed to be wrapped within 6 weeks.

The two tournaments, Asia e Memc, you can do.
The important thing is that they are not with other tournaments.
This year i had to constantly change the deadline because there were 5 tournaments simultaneously !!!!!.
Look at my calendar and there are prospects for making all tournaments without overlapping.
we can also make the big tournament, if we do the fun during the nation cup.

Pello and Loca are good in Euro multi so we chose USA to avoid them on Euro map.... we never played Euro but would have liked to do that... just not happened

Of course.
But what I wanted to say is that i can accept if some teams cannot play Asia TAG because they have players that never bought the map, is quite new. On other way, is difficult to me to accept that people don't allow to play EU map because they are stronger and/or like US only. That's all. I hope for next edition to have US/EU choice and ASIA choice more only if allowed by 2 teams.

EU Tag: After watching the eu tags of both BTB 1 and 2, I have to say that eu tag is NOT interesting. By far my least favorite tag (and also least favorite map). Why? Due to the stations, biggest tickets win. It's not fun to see your team try to do everything they can and get destroyed because the other team has monster tix. Just not interesting. Blocking in US and Asia brings a much harder aspect to the game.

FUN Tourney: Definitely can be started earlier and as it's the most casual tourney, doesn't matter much what it runs with.

League: I'm ok with the current format, but with several people this year it seemed to be about 3 matches too long. We'll always lose people during the season due to personal situations. And, there will always be those that seriously procrastinate with their matches. Determining numbers depends on how many people sign up - and I agree with dea, if we cut it, it needs to be done in steps.

Quote:

as we probably want to convince people like Angel, Schwen, Kasi ... to Register.

= Not gonna happen with those guys. I tried. I begged. Kasi said he won't play league because of fusion and spwc...and now he's not even playing spwc.

Overall, I think the current fusion format is great. Too many tourneys at the same time was definitely the problem.